Today's computing devices feature web browsers that allow users to access content on the Internet. A web browser is a software application that provides an interface (e.g., a “window”) for receiving user inputs and displaying data retrieved from the web. For ease of accessing multiple web sites simultaneously, many web browsers feature “tabbed” viewing of web pages, where multiple web site uniform resource locators (URLs) are accessible in a single window via individual tabs. Only one tab is selectable to be “active” at a time, and only the web page corresponding to the web site accessed in that current active tab is displayed in the browser window—each of the other tabs is treated as “inactive” and the web page therein is hidden from view unless that tab is made active.
Web sites oftentimes deliver auxiliary data (in addition to web page content for display) to web browsers that help track visitors to the sites and their activities during the visits. This auxiliary data includes cookies, hypertext markup language (HTML) data (e.g., HTML5 localStorage data), multimedia content (e.g., Flash objects), and the like. A cookie is simply a text file that a web server instructs a web browser to create and store upon its access to the site. It is usually created at the first visit, and may be subsequently updated upon future visits. For each cookie issued by a web site, the same information is stored on the web server—upon a user's subsequent visit to the site, the server retrieves the cookie via the web browser to identify and, in some instances, authenticate the user. The text file typically contains information in the form of “name-value pairs”, consisting of a variable name (e.g., User_ID) and an associated value (e.g., A8A62818DF47), and is stored in a dedicated browser store (e.g., a folder) in non-volatile memory (e.g., a hard disk) on the user's computer.
While the tabbed viewing configuration has enhanced user experiences on the web, users often have the false impression of a direct, contained, and private communication channel between the user and/or the user's computing device and the web site whose web page is presently displayed in the browser's active tab. This could not be further from the truth, however, since each web site accessed via a browser tab may deposit data to the browser store, regardless of whether that tab is active. In other words, all web sites accessed via the browser's tabs, whether active or not, share a common browser store and may conduct operations in the browser store throughout a user's web browsing session. Moreover, depending on whether those sites have partnered with third party content providers, those providers may also utilize the browser store as well. This raises privacy concerns as, in many instances, third parties may deposit content onto visitors' computing devices behind the scenes, and may use the content to track the visitors' browsing activities, and even the web sites themselves may not be privy to such content (or the size thereof). In fact, the content is also oftentimes encrypted by the third parties, obscuring it from view and analysis by the web sites.